All The News That's Fit To Tell
by Hunger4Righteousness
Summary: Roxanne's on the other side of the table now when it comes covering to her beau's media events. And Megamind can't help taking advantage of the situation. You know, since no one's going to know anyway.


_Oh, here he goes again._

Roxanne tensed, sensing the wiry fingertips of a blue hand deliberately walking up the side of her thigh. Her smile began to be a little strained as she gazed over the assembled crowd of reporters and cameramen jammed together in the press room, wide eyes glued on the couple seated at the table on a low platform before them. Smartphones were raised over heads, mics shoved forward, cameras trained their way, quietly clicking. She used to be one of them. Now she was behind the table with the hero, listening to the sound of his voice as he described how he had foiled the latest attempt by some new wannabe villain to take over the city. She wasn't really hearing what he was saying though.

The fingers stopped and wrapped slowly, ominously, around her leg; the warmth of his palm making her flush with nervousness. She held very still, as though nothing was going on behind the white table covering which was the only thing stopping all of these professional people just trying to do their jobs from getting a good view of her alien boyfriend having a grope fest of her left thigh.

The hand slid back and forth a couple of times and then stopped. It tightened, right in the soft bend where her thigh muscles met her hip. A ticklish spot. As he well knew. A bit more pressure was brought to bear, fingertips digging in, back and forth just briefly, testing for a response before relaxing and moving on, trolling for more profitable targets. She clenched her teeth, keeping her breathing even though her entire frame was now taut with anticipation. She would _not_ jump this time, no matter what he did!

Her adorable boyfriend, sweet as he had proven to be in every other way, had this unbelievable penchant for turning their press conferences into a kind of test. A game to see how long or how well she could retain her composure as he covertly tested her mettle in full view of a crowd. And all apparently for his own evil amusement.

It had become obvious to her that he had not quite shed _every_ last vestige of wickedness when at the first public news event they attended together, he had slipped a hand under the white cloth-covered table and sneakily grabbed her leg, right when she was taking a question, making her shoot up from her seat with an embarrassingly loud yelp. The grin that lit his face up all the way to his eyebrows had confirmed it was no accident and had also earned him several punches to the arm later when they were secluded outside the pressroom, but he'd only laughed infuriatingly.

And the next time he'd repeated his little trick. And the next. No matter how many times she warned him to cut it out, he couldn't seem to resist. It probably hadn't helped that in the end she could never seem to resist laughing about it along with him, and now here he was at it again.

Roxanne was amazed at how thoroughly he could torture her while remaining focused enough to relate a story able to capture the attention of an entire room full of journalists. They appeared to be completely captivated by his account of how he'd saved the city from destruction, mouths practically hanging open. Eyes front and center. They were especially captivated today for some reason. She clasped her hands on the table in front of her and pressed her lips together as his hand slipped down her leg and slowly squeezed just above her knee.

"What do you think?" he suddenly turned to ask.

Caught off guard, Roxanne realized she had no idea of what he'd been talking about. She'd been so focused on not reacting to the excruciating tour his fingers were taking of her limb that she hadn't paid attention to his words. And now here she was, caught out and put on the spot. Oh! Were they going to have words again later!

She looked him directly in the eye, taking note of the twinkle in his pretty green peepers, and answered smoothly in spite of her rising temper, "I think we should take the next question."

As arms shot up in the crowd, she pointed to one of her colleagues while casually letting her other hand drop below the edge of the table. "Yes. In the third row... right there."

"Megamind! Do you expect more trouble from this latest villain as far as…"

Words faded away again as she carefully slid her fingers down her thigh, groping for his wandering digits, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Everyone was looking right at them. She hoped they wouldn't notice the convulsive jerking of her shoulder if she really had to start grappling with him, but this time she wasn't going to put up with his antics without a fight.

There was a minor tussle as their fingers met. She had the advantage since he was also attempting to calmly formulate a decent answer to the reporter's question. At last she managed to get a good pinch in on the back of his wrist, as hard as possible.

"I-!" Megamind yelped. "I… don't think there's any reason to…" he went on, withdrawing his arm from under the table at last.

Victory! Roxanne eased the tension from her jaw, realizing that she'd been clenching it in a grim little pout that could have been very telling. She took a breath, and calmly entwined her fingers on the covered surface in front of her again, smiling a little, finally ready to pay attention to what they were really there for. She'd showed him.

Megamind laid an arm casually across the back of her seat as he talked on about his newest, very unconcerning, opponent. It wasn't an unusual gesture for him to make; their relationship was well known by this time and he often entertained questions from a crowd sitting just like this. He particularly enjoyed having her at his side during media events, and she was usually happy to accommodate his preference, torture or no. She knew how much he enjoyed showing off their intimate affiliation, even subtly. With that in mind, she relaxed and began to smile more easily.

"Next question."

Hands went up again, and Megamind nodded at the next lucky person.

"Roxanne, does it worry you at all that…"

That was when she felt it. A lazy tracing across her right shoulder blade. His finger innocently cruising along before gently slipping into the space between her upper ribs and right arm. She clamped it tighter to her side and focused all her attention on the columnist who was from one of the biggest papers in town.

"No, it doesn't worry me at all, Matt," she managed to say and jumped a little despite her earlier resolution as the fingertip dove deeper, riding up and down over a sensitive rib directly beneath her armpit. She disguised her reaction by leaning forward as though to give emphasis to her answer. No one would know she was effectively putting herself out of reach of her tormentor at the same time.

"I'm sure that whatever happens, or whomever may _harass_ _me_…" She turned her head to skewer her boyfriend with a very dark look indeed. The innocently impish smirk and slight shrug he answered back with made her want to grab the carafe of water that was at hand and dump it over his head. "Megamind will always do his best to get me, and this city, out of any fix."

Then seeing him holding back a snicker, she leaned his way, wrapping her fingers quickly around his lean thigh even higher than he'd been grabbing hers. "Right? Dear?"

Megamind grew visibly tense, his smile suddenly seeming a little forced. "Of course!" he answered brightly. "No one stands a chance of harming _Roxanne!-"_ His eyes popped as she upped the ante in his little game. "…of… harming our city's most beloved newshound… while I'm around," he finished weakly.

She stared at him narrowly. And judging by the answering look that darted her way from his still slightly prominent eyes, her point had been made. So she began to withdraw her hand from its dangerous proximity to his nether regions but suddenly felt him gripping her wrist. Pulling it closer again. She couldn't help rolling her eyes. _Oh good grief…_

She saw an eyebrow flick upward and a corner of his blue lips curl mischievously.

_No! We are not doing this! Not at a press conference. _

Another subtle lift of the black brows and a stroke of his fingers over the back of her knuckles was enough to make her nearly break into laughter at the same time as it increased her irritation.

_Yes, I remember that booth in the restaurant… But not here! Definitely not here._

His smile widened as he pulled her hand a little more insistently.

_No!_ Roxanne silently scolded, lowering her brows and continuing to resist. Her lips pursed as she tried very hard not to crack a smile. Dang it, he was just too funny sometimes but this was-

Behind them, Minion cleared his throat.

And suddenly they both became aware again of the assembled throng, waiting. Watching them. Looking out over the crowd, they realized heads were turning from one to the other like spectators at a tennis match; as though they were somehow following the secret exchange between the two people at the table. Not that there was any way they could have known what was going on… but when Megamind saw Wayne at the back of the standing room only crowd, a huge grin plastered across his hairy face, he let go of Roxanne's hand.

"That will be enough questions for today!" the big-headed hero declared as they simultaneously disengaged and stood up. "Thank you for coming!"

As the journalists and cameramen broke up into smaller groups abuzz with conversation, scraping back chairs and collecting equipment or whipping out cell phones to place calls, Minion leaned down to question, "What happened? You guys just… stopped talking. What was going on?"

"Oh, nothing," Megamind answered.

As Roxanne shook her head at her exasperating partner, Minion frowned. "Why do I always feel like I'm missing something?"

Wayne had pushed his way through the jumbled crowd to approach the table on the platform. "That was a pretty interesting press conference," he commented with a knowing smirk.

The pretty newscaster thought about his xray vision and grimmaced. "Yeah. Not our best. Definitely a lot of _nothing_ going on," she added, shooting the ex-villain a look.

Megamind shrugged and folded his arms, smugly complacent. "What?"

Wayne giggled in his oddly girlish manner as Roxanne added, "It's just a good thing that table skirt is there, or everybody in the room would have had a real nice view of _nothing_." Her fingers made air quotes as Megamind chuckled and Minion looked confused.

"What table skirt?" Wayne asked.

Roxanne and Megamind's heads snapped toward each other. Eyes wide, they ducked below the table they'd just been seated at and saw he was right. The front was uncovered. Completely open.

Straightening up, Roxanne clapped a hand across her eyes. "Oh… my… go-"

But Megamind laughed out loud; and even louder when she turned and began slapping at him. "Minion!" he chortled, fending her off. "I want a copy of every paper in the city! This press conference just turned into an expose worthy of the place of honor in my collection!"


End file.
